Reports of Mullah Omar capture sweep USBy Chidanand Rajghatta, TNN,
May 11, 2010, 07.32pm IST
WASHINGTON:
Reports of Taliban supreme Mullah Omar being captured in Pakistan raged through Washington on Tuesday, a day after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused some Pakistani officials of sheltering Osama bin Laden and the Taliban leadership.
The Obama administration did not respond to the reports, and independent sources said they had not been able to confirm the information.
Reports of
Mullah Omar's capture or custody first surfaced on the popular blog Brietbart where an analyst who formerly worked with the Department of Homeland Security claimed that through ''key intelligence sources'' in Afghanistan and Pakistan, he had just learned that Mullah Omar has been taken into custody.
''At the end of March, US Military Intelligence was informed by US operatives working in the Af/Pak theater on behalf of the D.O.D. that Omar had been detained by Pakistani authorities. One would assume that this would be passed up the chain and that the Secretary of Defense would have been alerted immediately. From what I am hearing, that may not have been the case,'' the analyst, Brad Thor, said.
''When this explosive information was quietly confirmed to United States Intelligence ten days ago by Pakistani authorities, it appeared to take the Defense Department by surprise. No one, though, is going to be more surprised than Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It seems even with confirmation from the Pakistanis themselves, she was never brought up to speed,'' he added, referring to Clinton?s remark on CBS 60 minutes on Sunday that some officials in Pakistan were sheltering Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar.
But the administration maintained a stony silence on the report -- which suggested Clinton was out of the military-intelligence loop -- unlike in the case of Taliban No.2 Mullah Baradar, whose capture was first leaked in Washington.
Meanwhile, various Obama administration officials went into a damage control overdrive on Monday to mollify Pakistan after
Clinton warned Islamabad of ''severe consequences'' if any future terrorist attack was traced to Pakistan in the 60 Minutes interview.
Officials went so far as to deny that Clinton had even used the expression much less made a threat, but when faced with the 60 minutes clip posted on the CBS website, questioned the context in which she made the comment.
"I think she (Clinton) was responding to a hypothetical question that the U.S would take seriously any link to a foreign country where there are successful terrorist attacks. She's not singling out any one country in particular," State Department Spokesman Philip Crowley asserted.
But Clinton clearly singled out Pakistan, and her remarks were unmistakably in the context of the Times Square bombing attempt. ''Heaven forbid that at attack like this that we can trace back to Pakistan were to have been successful, there would be very severe consequences,'' Clinton said.
The Obama administration's Af-Pak pointman Richard Holbrooke too took a pacifying role on the episode amid an outpouring of anger in Pakistan over Clinton?s remark. Because the interview was not shown in its entirety, the quotes appeared to be different from what the Secretary of State actually meant, he suggested.
The US military, whose day-to-day operations in Afghanistan depend heavily on Pakistan, also went into overdrive to pacify the Pakistani military after Clinton?s blistering attack. Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is said to have phoned Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, chief of the Pakistani army, to reassure him that the U.S was not trying to pressure him as a result of the Times Square case.
The messages ran contrary to what Hillary Clinton seemed to suggest in her CBS 60 Minutes interview, although she too blew hot and cold over Pakistan in that exchange.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/Reports-of-Mullah-Omar-capture-sweep-US/articleshow/5918087.cms
